-
Microsoft exec Silvia Candiani encouraged operators to be bold in adopting AI
-
Microsoft has a pair of new AI-based telco tools it is showcasing at MWC
-
Right now AI is an aide rather than a way to make the network fully autonomous
Asked what the most important lesson of her career has been, Silvia Candiani responded without hesitation. “It’s important to work with the art of the possible” rather than getting hung up on the idea that “we’ve never done it before,” she told Silverlinings. “If you don’t take a risk and go beyond your comfort zone, you’re not really learning.”
Candiani, who is VP of Microsoft’s Telco and Media business, might as well be speaking to operators directly about artificial intelligence (AI).
Telco and vendor execs have said repeatedly that they're nervous about the risks associated with letting AI run the network, that compliance with various regulations and reliability is an issue and that deciding which of the myriad potential use cases they should chase is proving difficult.
It’s not that Candiani is flippant about the risks telcos face in introducing new technologies in their networks. Indeed, she probably understands them better than most. Before joining Microsoft 14 years ago, she spent 10 years working for Vodafone Italy. She started back when it was still the startup Omnitel with fewer than 1 million customers and led consumer marketing (think strategy, pricing, customer experience and more) as the business was acquired by Vodafone and grew to more than 20 million customers.
But what she sees with AI is an opportunity.
“Telcos are number one, the center of the digital system of every single country," she explained.
"And so, if telcos are successful in digitizing themselves and becoming AI-first companies they can help digitize the entire ecosystem they operate in because they sell to SMBs, they talk to consumers."
Advancing telco AI
Microsoft is trying to gently (or maybe not so gently) nudge them in the right direction. At Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this week, the company unveiled a pair of AI-based solutions for telcos. These include an opt-in fraud detection product for consumers called Azure Operator Call Protection and Copilot in Azure Operator Insights, a generative AI tool to help network techs diagnose and respond to issues using natural language prompts.
Our sister site Fierce Wireless – which along with Silverlinings will soon be part of the new Fierce Network – covered the former in greater detail here.
Candiani said Copilot in Operator Insights is just one example of how generative AI can be applied to a specific domain within the network. In this case, she said Copilot makes it faster and easier for techs to interrogate the data from the network to find problems. The system also provides recommended actions for resolution based on information mined from industry best practices, she added.
Looking ahead, she said Microsoft also sees potential for Copilot to be used for gathering network threat intelligence and enhancing security.
That said, Copilot isn’t designed to make the network fully autonomous – at least, not yet.
“It’s not about the networks being 100% autonomous but it’s about automating some of the functions” in such a way that the right actions can be taken sooner, Candiani said.
In a recent report, Deloitte tipped 2024 to be the year telcos begin operationalizing generative AI solutions, particularly copilot technologies in the customer care, customer service and network performance arenas.
But Deloitte warned adoption isn’t as simple as plopping an AI assistant into existing telco systems.
“Enabling and operationalizing generative AI requires work to build the right foundations and ecosystem relationships. For many, this starts with modernizing their data systems. Diverse and unstructured data sets, like those for customer service and network operations, may need to be brought together into a more coherent repository that can be used to train foundational models,” the report stated.
Making the most of MWC
Like all the other glitterati of the telecom world, Microsoft is in Barcelona this week strutting its stuff. That includes showing off updates to the Azure Operator Nexus platform originally adopted by AT&T and hyping up all the things its Copilot can do (for instance, surfacing policies, summarizing tickets and finding repair instructions for the folks at Lumen).
Candiani spoke with Silverlinings ahead of the show and didn’t mention whether or not she’d be on-site. But if she is, perhaps the best way to strike up a conversation with the Milan native is over pizza rather than tapas. Neapolitan style is preferred but when abroad she’ll take what she can get, she told us.
Follow our coverage of Mobile World Congress 2024 in our dedicated channel here.